


Kilo X-Ray Red Six

by crychan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Buried Alive, Concussions, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Military, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2018-12-12 16:51:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11741190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crychan/pseuds/crychan
Summary: An hour ago, Sergeant Keith Kogane was riding along with his team through the Afghan desert. When he awakes, he's six feet under. What will become of him an hour from now?Remember, patience yields focus.





	1. Dazed and Confused

**Author's Note:**

> i had many more ideas that never got put on paper for lance’s buried alive fic, so im writing one for keith. this will have one or two shiro pov’s just because some parts did seem fun to write about in shiro’s pov. also: i have an idea of where i want this to go written down! with rought plot points and an ending!!! no more guess writing! this will help me push out chapters.
> 
>  
> 
> sorry to beat a dead horse with the same trope btw but gotta repeat stuff.
> 
> Shiro is not in this chapter, he will be in chapter two! :) Updates hopefully monthly! Took me 3 days to write this just right! The ending is bad, but I couldn’t find a way to stop the writing.

The first thing Keith always did when he woke up was stretch. He’d pull his arms out as far as they could go and twist his back left and right.

When he woke up that day, his arms were barely extended before they hit a wall. He felt along the walls for a dazed half second, still foggy from sleep. When he opened his eyes, his surroundings had remained dark. He breath caught. His heart jumped. He waved a hand in front of his face. He couldn’t see it. Where was he? What was going on? He had no bearings, no clue of which way was left or right or up or down. He was confused, disoriented. His breathing quickened and became short puffs. His body felt like it was buzzing, his fingers felt numb. He began feeling with his hands, placing them on the area surrounding him, like he was a pantomime. He began kicking his foot down on the wall he had felt near his feet. He slammed his hands on the ceiling and struck the lid with his knees. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the fuck,” Was on repeat under his breath, but as time went on as his worries and confusion rose, his volume rose with it. All sense of composure had left him, he was now just a man alone in the dark, not a Sergeant on his second tour of the Middle East, not the stoic loner Shiro had always teased him of being. Something trickled through the cracks and onto his face. Sand? And if sand could drift through an unseeable crack on this box, then Keith assumed he was buried under a lot of it.

Once smacking his hands on the ceiling proved fruitless, he slammed his head back on the floor with a frustrated grunt, angry tears filled his eyes. Fuck. That hurt. More than he thought it was supposed to. More tears built up while he tried to rub at his head, before noticing a weird sensation.

His hair felt wet.

Keeping his arms close to his side, he slide his left hand around to the back of his neck and felt his way up while turning his head to the right, the unspilled tears now cascading down the horizontal of his face. Keith’s fingertips met a pool of what he had to assume was blood. When had his head started bleeding? What had even happened? His memories were foggy, he couldn’t really remember much of anything. He had the barest of recollections that he was in a convoy (To where?). And then, an explosion. The rest was a guessing game. He must have hit his head, maybe the car had flipped. Was his team alive? He didn’t recall.

He can’t bandage it. He took a deep breath. What to do? His brain was slowly turning the gears around, but his brain was practically mush, he felt tired after being awake for three minutes, and ideas and thoughts seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

 _The radio_.

This idea stuck with him. He can call for his team, he can radio HQ, he can get out.

Keith began the awkward shuffle off feeling his pant legs for his radio, he could brush the antenna with his fingertips on his left leg, near his knee. He made an attempt to crunch his left side to reach it but quickly retreated that idea once his abdomen went rigid with pain. He groaned in pain and shut his eyes tight, not that it made a difference in lighting. He moved his hands back up to his stomach to put pressure on the area that was hurting and felt something wide and thin protruding from inside him. Oh, so not only concussed, but also impaled on what is probably shrapnel from the convoy. How had he not noticed this earlier? Shock? Could shock really obscure such a severe injury? This took priority before the radio. He had to keep the shrapnel from moving too much. If it had hit a major vessel, and it moved, he’d bleed out before he ran out of air. The best way to keep it still was to put a lot of bandages tight around the item. He could use his jacket, but to do that he’d have to see his hands.

He needed light.

This was a frustrating set of steps that seemed to keep going, he was having trouble remembering it all. He needed the light to be able make the strips to be able keep the shrapnel in place to be able to reach his radio to be able to call HQ to be able to get out. That was Keith’s Five Step Plan to Freedom.

He began to check his jacket pockets for any supplies, a flashlight, a lighter, matches, hell, even a glow stick. His right pant pocket had a weight to it. When he stuck his hand in he felt a cylinder that widened on one end, made of metal. A flashlight. It had to be. Finally, he caught a break. He pulled it out and nimbly palpated his fingers around the device, covering the rod in coppery red fingerprints, looking for a button or switch, he even tried twisting the head, all with no luck. When Keith felt the base, he managed to feel a rough rubbery texture that usually signified a button. He pushed on it until it clicked, and bright LED light flooded his surroundings. The box was a bit spacious, more so than he had though. A bit less than two meters long, about a meter across and a half-meter tall, made out of planks of wood. When he examined the wound, he noticed it was glass, perhaps part of the windshield, only two inches wide, three inches tall, and a few centimetres thick. It was in the very lower right abdomen, just above his hip bone, so it looked have missed his more vital organs, but was probably near his large and small intestine. Keith put the flashlight in his mouth, gripped by his teeth and began making strips out of his jacket. Keith widen the hole the glass had made when it had gone through the jacket with his fingers, the ripping of cloth loud in the otherwise quiet container. He eventually created strips from the zipper area of his jacket. Then, he began the delicate work of wrapping unsanitary, dingy cloth around the stab wound, tight, making sure the glass wouldn’t be able to move in the slightest.

With a slow exhale, he crunched the top of his torso and put his back to the wall behind him, the back of his head being pushed down by the low ceiling. It aggravated his head wound, but that could wait until Keith was relatively certain he wouldn’t bleed out. He laid one long strip perpendicular to his body on one side of the shard, then held one end with left hand, and moved the fabric under his back and all the way around and gripped that end with his right hand. He formed a knot with the two ends and pulled it tight. He double knotted it, just to be certain. He repeated this action with another strip on the opposite side of the shard.

By the time he was finished he was exhausted. He collapsed onto his back, breathing hard. He took the flashlight out of his mouth and panted, eyes threatening to close on him. His strength felt sapped. His stomach had been in a constant crunch and ached. He refused to let his eyes close until he could make contact with his camp. Finally, with the shard secure, he could grab his radio and begin Step Four of his escape plan, call help.


	2. Hailing Frequencies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> please enjoy and let me know what you think! :)
> 
>  
> 
> also, sooooo much jargon to look up, hope most of it's correct! <3 i love jargon

He had taken the flashlight out of his mouth when he had laid down, then fumbled for his radio with a small wince at the bend of his abdomen. He held the trigger and move the radio close to his mouth, then began to urgently repeat "Camp Lozano, this is Kilo X-Ray Red Six, please respond." or a variety of such. As time marched on, his calls lost formality, and Keith lost his composure.

"Camp Lozano, come in."

"Camp Lozano, this is Kilo X-Ray, please come in."

"Kilo X-Ray Black, this is Kilo X-Ray Red Six, are you there?"

"Can anybody respond? Can anybody hear me?"

"Please, is there fucking anybody?!"

All of Keith's cries were returned with pure static, there was not one hint of anybody hearing him at all.

 _Why?_ Why could nobody hear him? Was he buried too deep? Was he on the wrong frequency? Was he out of range?

He had to keep trying. Even if the chances he'd escape this box before he consumed all of his breathable air were slim in his eyes, he could not give up. Shiro would kick his cold dead ass if he did.

He kept on like a broken record, fiddling with the frequency tuner like a bad DJ.

Click. "Kilo X-Ray Black, come in, this is Kilo X-Ray Red Six." Clack.

" _Kssshh._ "

Click. "Kilo X-Ray Black, come in, this is Kilo X-Ray Red Six." Clack.

" _Ksssh-- ssh-- Wrr--wrrrrr._ "

Click. "Anybody from Camp Lozano, please respond, this is Kilo X-Ray Red Six." Clack.

" _Ksshhh --ix --ading-- ksshhh._ " Alone in the darkness, nobody could see Keith's eyebrows rise into his hairline, or hear the sharp suck of breath into his lungs. He began making small adjustments to the frequency with minimal twists of his fingers, his grip tightening and white knuckled on the radio.

"Camp Lozano, wha-- this is Kilo X-Ray Red Six! How, uhh, how copy?"

" _Ki--sshh-- Reading you three-by-five--wrrr, what is --kshh--own location?_ "

"I'm, uhh, underground?"

" _Ksssssh-- Repeat that, Kilo X-Ray, you're underground?_ "

"Under... sand." He clarified. "C-connect me to Kilo X-Ray Black-Actual, or just somebody from HQ."

" _Are you injured, have you made contact with the rest of your squad--wrrrrr?_ "

"N-no, no, I'm just by my-fucking-self. Put me through with Takashi Shiro _now_! I don't know what the fuck happened, just get me talking to Major Shirogane yesterday!"

" _Kshhhhhhh... Wilco, Red Six, connect... sssshhh --ow._ "

Keith let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, his body unwound like a taught coil being released. Rescue sounded possible, it felt like it was tangible by the barest touch of his fingertips, so close that he could feel himself go giddy and feel his head go feather-light at the thought of escaping this box, a heaviness was raised off his shoulders just thinking about reuniting with Shiro, his team. Theatrics and dramatization aside, he had hope.

" _Kshh--Kilo X-Wrrr, this is-- sshhhh X-Ray Black, I have been brief...our situation, but I need some clarification on one thing."_ Leave it to Shiro to remain formal and militaristic when discussing the rescue of his husband _. "I wassssh-old you are buried underneath sand, some-wrrrr_ "

"Yeah, I have no idea where my team is, where I am, I'm just... I'm in a bad way and need help." It was silent for a moment on the radio. "...C'mon Shiro, I'm not a goner, am I?"

 

In some cases, soldiers who were captured by the enemy, stuck in No Man's Land, or were in a wreck too big to waste manpower on were just...left behind. Nobody rescued them, their families were informed that the victims were KIA. Those cases were rare and few, but the way it sounded to Keith, Shiro was probably considering if this was one of those rare times. After all, the Afghan desert is big, and Keith doubted they'd have the manpower to waste finding one soldier.

 

It stayed quiet. "S...Shiro? Still there?" Nothing. "Anybody?" Fuck. Had his radio lost contact, then? "J-Just say something, let me know if I still have you, how copy, HQ?"

" _...You're reading three-by-five, Kilo X-Ray. We're going to do everything we can to find you, we're sending a team to scout the wreck and retrieve your dash cam, if salvageable. We'll see if we can find out what happened. While we wait on results for that, you need to tell me everything that happened._ "

What happened? It had been a while since he woke up, but his head just felt foggier, and trying to focus and remember what events had exactly transpired hurt like ice picks crammed in his ears. Still, he had to try.

For Shiro.


	3. Crazy, But Not Afraid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay. I was going to make this twice as long, but decided not to, and instead updated. Univeristy is kicking my ass, hard. Thank you to anybody still interested in this story. <3
> 
> also Crazy, But Not Afraid by Wild Yaks is Keith’s anthem

“So do you think the desert ladies will swoon when we drop off supplies? Like, ‘Ohhhh, Private Sanchez, he’s so rugged and handsome! He carries crates of water like they’re crates of kittens!’ Yeah?” Lance flexed in his seat, looking like a primed javelin thrower, aiming at the hidden sky.

They were driving to a town not far from their camp, full of native allies in dire need of medicine and water, which the camp had no problem providing.

“Or maybe they’ll say, ‘That lanky guy looks more like a beanpole than a soldier.’” Keith replied. Lance and the rest of the team sat in the back with the tied down supplies, while Keith rode in the front with their driver in one of their less-armoured cars. “Besides, why would you want some Middle Eastern girls to jump you? Weren’t you bragging about having a girl back home?”

“Damn straight I was bragging, take a look!” He could hear the small photo Lance was flapping around behind him. Keith groaned, unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around to meet Lance halfway and grab the photo from him.

It was a photo of him and a girl at the beach, taken by somebody else. You could see Lance with his thousand-gigawatt grin, and the woman next to him: dark-skinned, white hair, blue eyes and a delicate smile across her face. They was almost the same height, which is saying something, the man is ridiculously tall. “She looks... cute. Not _my_ type, but cute.” He joked as he handed the photo back to him.

“What do you mean, ‘Not your type’?! Is it black women?! Because, frankly, sir, that’s kinda racist, and you’re, like, asian so—!” And then Lance squawked in pain. “What the hell, man?!”

“The Sergeant’s _married_!” Some voice hissed, stating it more like a question than a statement. “To Major Shirogane! He was making a _joke_ , man!”

It’s silent for a moment before Lance begins to verbally trip over himself to create a roundabout way apologize that gives Lance none of the blame. “I’m sorry about that, I mean, like, how was I supposed to know? I-I-I didn’t mean that, I just—“

“Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He replied, with enough reservedness and quiet so that the guilt would eat away at Lance, like Shiro taught him. He didn’t actually mind, his personal life was quite private, so there was no reason for Lance to have known that he was married, aside from the ring on a necklace that was usually hidden under his clothes, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like teasing the man whenever he could. He was taken away from his thoughts by the driver, patting his arm with the back of his hand.

“Hey, buckle your belt, man, you’re flying through that windshield if we go up in smoke, and I don’t think the Major’d like to see your brain all over the hood.” The driver chastised.

“Jeez, _mom_ , it’s like _you’re_ in charge of this run, not me.” Keith scoffed but complied.

When he reached for the seatbelt, it all went to hell.

It all happened in roughly two seconds. The car went up, somebody, maybe Lance, screamed “ _roll over, roll OVER_ ” while the vehicle tilted forward and to the right, then fell down. Everything was dark and loud, pure chaos, for all of two seconds. Then silence. Just the sounds of rubble settling, dust in the air, and ringing in his ears.

In the end, Keith did end up on the hood of the vehicle, body and face littered with tiny glass shards, seemingly none in his eyes, so far. Most of the impact of his head was absorbed in his helmet ( _thank God for helmets_ ) but his vision was blurry, doubled, fading. He didn’t have the energy to move, or sit up, or twitch a finger. He just laid there, and breathed.

After a few moments, he felt himself be dragged off the hood, and leaned against the car. He saw somebody cross his field of vision, although he was too disoriented to keep his eyes open for long. He felt soft hands on his cheeks, trying to get him to open his eyes.

When he did, he saw Lance, in all his charismatic glory. He was talking, but Keith couldn’t hear a word he was saying. “Can’t hear you...” is what Keith hoped he had said. After another few moments, Keith could hear Lance’s muffled voice in his left ear; something, something, radio’d camp, something something, hold tight. Then Lance suddenly whipped his head to the right. Apparently something was happening outside of Keith’s peripheral vision that Keith couldn’t see or hear. Before he could turn his head, before he fully register the fear that was written all over Lance’s face, a gun was fired, and Lance fell back, limp. Keith felt blood spray onto his face, felt Lance’s body lay across Keith’s lap. Keith just... froze. Choked up. It wasn’t until hands wrapped under Keith’s armpits and began dragging him away did he snap out of it. These were not people his recognized. They weren’t on his side. They were taking him _away_. He began to yank his arms around, kick his feet, slam his shoulder into their knees, dig his nails into their ankles, bite at their legs. He grabbed whatever bits if shrapnel and stabbed it into their legs as hard as he could. He fought. He screamed, and he yelled, and he thrashed against their hands. And when they held him down and tied a soaked, bitter- tasting rag across face like a muzzle, he fought that too, any hand that drifted too close to his bared teeth got the bite of a lifetime, he cut fingers down to the bone with his mere teeth. He didn’t give up, even thought it looked like Keith had no chance of escaping. He kept yelling, kept trying to pull himself free and drag his heels into the dirt. But in the end, it was a doomed effort.

He panted behind the cloth, his short burst of energy already lost. His eyelids felt heavy and he struggled to remain tense, when his brain seemed to make him go lax. The blurriness returned. His muscles began to feel heavy, his arms like lead. His movements became sluggish, and then stopped. He felt like his brain was full of cotton, and his senses became dulled; all he could smell was smoke, taste some other person’s blood in his mouth, he could barely feel the ground he was being dragged on, and his hearing became muffled and muted. Eventually, his consciousness was consumed by the black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really didn’t like Keith and Lance’s different levels of power, it seemed unfair to make Lance Keith’s subordinate, so that took a while to write, because Lance would never treat Keith with respect.
> 
> Also sorry about the ambiguity around Lance’s death.


	4. It Comes And Goes In Waves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was a MONSTER to write! It’s over! Ahhhh!

Keith couldn’t remember anything before or after the crash, not a damn thing. So they had to rely on the car’s footage of the crash.

What Shiro could see from the recovered dash cam was limited at best. That didn’t stop him from watching it over and over and over again. He could see the hood of the vehicle and the road in front of it. He could hear voices drowned under the sound of the engine. When the car flew up, the engine turned off, and everybody’s voices were heard with much more clarity, yells and screams overlapped one another, glass shattering, metal crunching, folding, giving way. The vehicle had completely rolled over, landing precariously back on its wheels. When the vehicle went still, and the dust began to settle, Shiro could a body on the hood of the car, not moving.

After a few more moments, one of the soldiers ran around the side of the vehicle and practically stared at the hood like a deer in the headlights, his blue eyes impossibly wide. Then the man screamed something unintelligible and scrambled forward, climbing onto the hood of the car and carefully manipulating the body on the hood. He kept muttering something under his breath, and it took a while for Shiro to make it out. “Keith, Keith, Keith, Keith...”

It was Keith lying on the hood? Keith? His Keith? “It’s not that bad, really, it’s not _that_ that bad....” he kept mumbling. “Could be a lot worse, l-like sooo much worse, man... I-I mean, y-you look... _gooood, giiirl_?” The man scoffed a bit, and Shiro heard something shatter, the sound even made Shiro cringe, but the soldier sounded relieved. “Oh, thank God. Okay, you numb anywhere, big guy? Keith? S-sir? Team leader? K-Kinda need to flip you on your back. B-But I could paralyze you, or break your spine, or, or mess it all up... how am I supposed to tell if you got anything wrong with you, man?!” Keith showed no sign of responding. “Uhhh... fuck, crap, fuck, _shit_...” The man sat on the hood and held his head in his hands, in between his knees. “Uhh, _ummm_...“ His head shot up like a rocket and a gasp escaped him. He grabbed a piece of glass, then reached over the hood to Keith’s right arm and prodded his hand with it. Keith’s body tensed and he tried to pull his arm away. He did the same for Keith’s left hand. Same reaction. Shiro heard Keith make a small noise of confusion and pain. “Okay, okay, okay, y-you’re okay, buddy, it’s gonna be okay. I-It’s a good thing, I think, if you can feel that stuff then that means your spine probably isn’t all outta whack. Thank you, Derek Shepherd, you brilliant god.” Shiro assumed the man couldn’t reach Keith’s feet from the hood, but did he best to gently poke Keith as far down his leg he could, but Shiro couldn’t see the results. He could see, however, the unknown man’s name on his uniform. Private Lance Sanchez.

Lance’s arms wrapped under Keith’s and Keith was dragged further onto the hood, then flipped over. His face was covered in tiny glass shards, along with one huge piece in his lower abdomen. “C-c’mon, off the hood, off the hood...” He kept dragging Keith further onto the hood until the man slid off, then picked Keith up bridal style and set him down again in front of the car. “Okay, okay, uhhh, you awake?” Shiro couldn’t see Keith’s face anymore, but Lance’s seemed optimistic. “Open your eyes, Keith. Come on, buddy. Awesome, great! W-wait, uhh, don’t talk, a-and stay awake. Somebody already radio’d camp about what happened, a-and they’re going to send out people, you’re gonna be okay. Just gotta stay here.”

Then Lance’s head jerked to look left. Shiro was so enraptured in the scene that he hadn’t even noticed an entire firefight going on around Lance and Keith. Two men approached Lance, guns drawn. And Lance froze. Shiro couldn’t tell what Lance was about to say before he was shot and his body fell back with such a snap that it looked fake.

The men moved along to grab Keith, his Keith, and drag him along the ground by his arms. Keith looked dazed and unfocused for a minute, Shiro couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open, before he began to sluggishly tug on his arms, met with easily fought resistance. As he continued, Keith’s eyes began to widen, clarity approached him. Suddenly, Keith body surged forward while an angry scream tore from his mouth. His feet dug into the ground and twisted and pulled his arms away from the men. He dug his nails into their legs, and slammed his body into them. Keith was so far away now, Shiro could barely tell what was going on, but could hear him screaming loud and clear. Eventually, they had stopped, one man held Keith’s arms while another sat on his chest. Shiro’s vision was obscured, but Keith had quieted down, and they began to move again. Eventually, they left the camera’s sights, and there was nothing but the sound of fire crackling, metal crunching, and the rhythmic pulsing of blood through his ears.

Shiro was an idiot. He had had no idea who had radio’d them; it had sounded like a bass boosted speaker met a toy store walkie talkie. He had never even wondered if Keith was a part of this. When he heard the news, he hadn’t even thought to think of Keith. Shiro had been so busy recently; he had seen Keith a total of zero times in the past month. They slept in different bunks, ate at different times. He hadn’t personally known who had radio’d them, but now he knew for certain it was his husband.

If Shiro hadn’t known who it was, as much as he would have wanted to, he probably would not have sent a rescue party to scour the entire desert in search for one man. Had the circumstances been more convenient, he’d like to think he would have. However this was a waste of time, a waste of resources and any other person would have made the same call and left this man for dead.

But this was Keith, so logic flew out the window, and instinct stepped in.

“How are you doing, Keith?”

 _“Peachy keen, sir.”_ Keith’s voice was strained, and raspy, but still deep, like he had something caught in his throat. His speech was slurred and quiet. _“How did the recovery team go? Find anything on the video?”_

“We have a direction, we think, southwest. We sent a team that way about fifteen minutes ago, you just gotta listen for them, the car, their feet.”

_“Great. Th-That’s great. I mean, I’m pretty sure I have tinnitus, but th’s great... Ugh, agh, fuck.”_

“Keith? What happened? Keith?”

The radio was quiet. No static, Keith wasn’t pressing the talk button.

“Keith? Still read me? _Keith_.”

More silence. Until—

“ _M-My side... it hurts._ ”

Was the shock and adrenaline wearing off? Did Keith have internal damage, internal bleeding? Shiro saw the piece of glass in Keith’s side; he hoped Keith hadn’t jostled or been moved too much.

“How bad?”

“ _Pre’y bad, hurts to move... Wha... My head... hurts_.”

“Hold tight, Keith. Somebody will be there soon.” He wanted to be there. He should be there. The more you ranked up, the less you saw of active duty it seemed. Over the radio, he could hear the tiny sounds of pain Keith was making, faintly, like he was trying not to cry out. Shiro wants to steal a car and scour every square inch of sand until he can bring Keith back, safe and sound. 

“ _Do you think m’gonna die down here, Shiro?_ ” That pulled Shiro out of his spiral, and into Keith’s. Keith sounded tired, like maybe he was just having some late night meta thoughts and not lying in a literal coffin. “ _Like maybe I’ll run out of air? Or maybe choke on sand? Or bleed out, or get’n aneurism or get blown up by some nearby landmine or just..._ ” Keith trailed off. He didn’t continue. Any one of those was probably more likely than Shiro ever seeing Keith again. He hadn’t seen him in weeks, and the first thing he hears is that he’s probably about to choke on his own exhales?

“Keith....”

“ _M’head hurts..._ ”

“I know, baby.”

“ _Shiro...?_ ”

“Yeah?”

“ _How did the recovery team go? Was there anythin’ on th’video?_ ” This wasn’t good.

“You already asked that, Keith. Keith, wh-what’s wrong, baby?”

“ _M’head really hurts..._ ” Keith choked up. “ _It hurtsso bad..._ ” This was bad. Keith had been fine just seconds ago. He was talking, making conversation, well, contemplating his own mortality. Now he had the memory of a goldfish.

“I-I know, baby.”

“ _Sh’ro...?_ ”

“Yes, Keith?”

“ _M’head hurss..._ ” Keith was crying. He kept babbling, Shiro couldn’t even understand him.

“I know. People are coming, Keith, just listen for them.”

“ _Shi..._ ” Keith was cut off by his own sobbing.

“Try to rest, Keith. Just listen for the others. They’re coming, Keith, please.”

“ _M-M’head... Shiro,_ ”

“Just rest, Keith...” Shiro didn’t want to listen to Keith like this. He wanted his Keith back. His witty, hard-ass, husband. He _needed_ him. It felt so wrong, Keith sounded so _wrong_. 

“ _Head hurs...“_

 _“_ Keith, don’t talk, just rest, _please_.” Shiro was on the verge of tears. He had seen and heard Keith cry, but this was different. When Keith cried, he seemed to just... roll with it. He wouldn’t choke up, he’d keep saying what he was saying, he didn’t _sob_. And Shiro couldn’t do anything to help him. He couldn’t just ask him to stop crying. He couldn’t ask him to stop breaking his heart.

Keith seemed to heed his advice. The static stopped. For a moment.

” _Sh’ro... m’head..._ ” A sniffle. Keith must have forgotten. Already. “ _Ears keep ringin’... an’ my head hurssbad... an’ m’tired..._ ”

”I know, baby, I’m sorry, I know it hurts. I wish I could help you. I’m sorry.”

Keith didn’t respond. Shiro didn’t try to start another conversation. He didn’t want to hear Keith’s pained voice over and over anymore, he didn’t want to feel to powerless anymore. Sitting at the camp, just listening to Keith cry about his head, it felt like torture.

” _Sh...ro..._ ”

No. Shiro can’t do this again, he can only listen to Keith’s broken and whispery voice so much.

”Keith, _please_...”

” _Think I hear someone... diggin’... Sh’ro...?_ ”

Shiro was out of his seat and sprinting down the hall, radio in a deathgrip in his hand.

Fuck his commander. Fuck sitting in a chair with a radio in his hand. Fuck whoever got in his way on the way to a car. Fuck _the army_. _Fuck this_.

He practically threw some soldier out the car and sped off, southwest, radio in the passenger seat.

 

_Hold on, Keith._

_Wait for me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith has a concussion, and when shock initially set in during the wreck, it was kind of helping him stay coherent enough to process the situation, and minimizing his concussion symptoms. The he got knocked outta here, which is never good to do if you have a head injury (Cheryl: Yeah, *snickering* you’re gonna want a brain scan.) now that he’s concious, his body is also in second stage trauma/hypovelemic shock. boy lost a lot of blood. the second stage is pretty much damage control, trying to keep blood going to only the important things, like organs, and so his body isn’t really doing any more excess work, like producing epinephrine and so his brain is swelling a tiiiny bit from the concussion. sorry lance, i think we need a real derek shepherd.
> 
> Sorry about the wait! So much happening!
> 
> I failed one of my courses and had to drop one this semester because the class I failed was its prerequisite. I am leasing a house by my campus because a group of people on my residence floor have been harassing me and my friends: they will bang on my door at 4 am, they stack furniture in front of my door to stop me from leaving, do the cup of water prank at my door, they tape garbage to the outside of my room, scream in the hallways, do illegal drugs, tamper with their fire alarms and stalk and harrass my social medias. I’m radio silent and locking down my accounts until it’s over.
> 
> Also, since I have last updated, I watched BoJack Horseman AND Archer.
> 
> I love BoJack’s complex character, he’s very “human” lol and S4E06 was my fave episode by a long shot. Those Voice In My Head moments were amazing, and combined with that twisted ending where you can’t tell if BoJack is lying out of pity or hope is just... it leaves me speechless. Also Princess Carolyn is a fuckin QUEEN yo. And Canon Asexual Todd has got me hypeddddd.
> 
> I love Archer Vice and Archer Dreamland. And I love analyzing Archer so much. The guy is so fucked up in the head. And Archer Dreamland was like the best god damn gift ever, we finally get a look at the inner workings of such a broken man. Also I really hope Lana and Archer is endgame. Seriously, might write some angsty Archer fics, because that fandom needs some help in the content department.
> 
> Super long chapter to make up for the wait!


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